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Cooking Curls

October 23, 2012

My hair is the worst when it comes to holding a curl, but, I have found a solution, thanks to my mom. She found the idea on Pinterest, and it's a fantastic cure to perpetually straight hair. You can make tight, spiral curls from root to tip or loose beach waves, which I'll be showing you!

What you'll need:

Aluminum Foil

Hair straightener

Simple huh?

1) Cut the tin foil into square pieces. Your hair thickness, length, and size of curl you desire will dictate how large the pieces should be.

Since I'm doing large curls, I cut larger pieces of tin foil, about 5x6 inches. For smaller curls you can probably use 3x4 inch pieces. This is something you'll have to probably test to make sure the foil piece is large enough to wrap around your hair.

2) Then you'll take a piece of hair, again, since I'm doing larger curls, I wrapped my hair around 3 fingers, for tight curls, wrap a much smaller piece of hair around one finger. Then, in keeping your hair coiled, slide it off your finger by holding the ends so they don't slip out.

3) Wrap the tin foil around the hair, and then fold the bottom of the foil up to hold. Do this until you've wrapped all of your hair, mine took 11 pieces of foil, other times when doing tight curls, it's been up to 30 wrapped pieces.

4) Then use your straightener to heat the foil, for large curls, about 45 seconds, small, 20-25 seconds. Do this until you've heated all of the pieces of hair.

5) Wait for the foil to cool and then you can begin pulling the foil out, but don't pull it out until it's cool. The foil slides right off and there's your curls! You can use hairspray if you like, but mine will even hold all day.

My foil pieces.

My hair is really long and straight, went to sleep with it wet and this is what I wake up with.

Wrapping the piece of hair around my fingers.

This is what it should look like when after you slide it off your fingers.

Fold the foil around the coil.

Fold the bottom of the foil up next.

Once it's all up.

Don't worry if it hangs, you don't want all of your hair to be curled. With big loose waves anyway.

Heat with the straightener.

Once all the pieces are cool, the foil slides right off and...

This is what your curls will look like!

For the big curls, I usually have a curling iron ready, just in case some of the hair gets "bent" just to smooth it out.

Hi Kaitlyn! I'm sure if you were to do it every day there would be some heat damage as with any other kind of treatment, but this way you're not pulling you hair or breaking the ends of your hair off, getting it caught in the hinge of the curling iron/straightener, and your hair isn't in contact with the heat source for as long.

It's heat so of course it does somewhat but you're not pulling your hair like you would with a curling iron or straightener, this is what I was referring to, you don't end up with the frizz, dead looking hai

This didn't work for my hair/hair type at all. I followed all instructions and then finger combed it out and it was standing about 6 inches up off my head. My hair is long-ish (it reaches my shoulder blades) so I was surprised at the crazy height it ended up giving me. I ended up having to wet my hair, condition, and then re-dry it straight. No waves for me with this method!

Hey everyone!I'm a hair stylist, and I really wouldn't recommend doing this, at least not regularly. This method, while effective, will completely fry your hair after a while.Just think about it, you're putting direct heat from a straightener on it for half a minute or longer, and then it doesn't cool down immerdiately, but the foil holds the heat even longer. And also, the foil gets extremely hot, hotter even than the hair normally does with a straightener.So much heat over such a long time will dry out the hair and lead to frizzy, dull ends that break off easily. Use this method if you must, but I really wouldn't recommend doing it more than every once in a while.Love, M.

This is SUCH a lifesaver! I have naturally curly "Boticelli" type hair, but there's a weak spot in the middle that isn't growing out as fast as I'd like. I'm getting married in 2 weeks and caved to buy some extensions to blend the short spot since I'm keeping my hair down and don't want an inverted "V" at the back of my head. I've been experimenting trying to get the faux curls to match my real curls and with an iron, they look perfect...till gravity takes its hold and they relax. Tried different irons, methods, hairsprays, etc. The curls always expand and become wider than my natural.

Tried this with the extensions last night and now the only problem is they're almost *too* tight. :) They're hanging in my room at the moment to test their longevity, but I feel with some perfecting of my technique this is going to be the ticket.

Two questions? Can I use my ion blow dryer instead of a straightner? It's much hotter and not broken! And does my hair need to be damp? Since my straightener is broke it has been months since I've styled my hair in anyway! This is perfectly practical for me! Unfortunately my 4 kids needs come before investing in new hair products!!

I haven’t tried doing it with foil. You see, I’ve been trying out the tutorials here on how to curl your hair with a straightener http://www.restylepro.com/blogs/news/18118135-how-to-curl-your-hair-with-a-straightener. But I’m still looking for options. Hehe Thanks!

I can't wait to try this on born my daughters when they get home. My 6 yr old has very long volume straight hair down to her bum and my 8yr old has very straight sleek shoulder length hair. My little one begs for me too curl hair bc when she was a baby she had very pretty ringlets but as it got long the curls came out then I eventually had to trim it at 4 yrs bc it was interfering with potty stuff and the last curls at the ends were cut off and never came back. I've tried ion hot rollers and I have a curling iron and neither girls curls stay for even an hour. . I hope this works! I'll update after and let you girls know how it held up.

I can't wait to try this on born my daughters when they get home. My 6 yr old has very long volume straight hair down to her bum and my 8yr old has very straight sleek shoulder length hair. My little one begs for me too curl hair bc when she was a baby she had very pretty ringlets but as it got long the curls came out then I eventually had to trim it at 4 yrs bc it was interfering with potty stuff and the last curls at the ends were cut off and never came back. I've tried ion hot rollers and I have a curling iron and neither girls curls stay for even an hour. . I hope this works! I'll update after and let you girls know how it held up.

I think this is the best way to curl and flat your hair. Though I have always used best flat iron and curler in the marker but always knew that it was going to damage my hair to some extent. I think use aluminum foils will minimize the damage.

My dreadfully pin-straight hair has NEVER held a curl for longer than an hour, until I used your method!!! It's been 12 hours and my hair is still curled! Astonishingly pretty long beachy waves on me. THANK YOU FOR POSTING THIS!!!

Hey happy little hummingbird! The method is awesome and works but we always found that aluminum foil is just not the easiest to use. So we turned around and took the idea a step further to and developed reusable heat shield pockets! If you would like to check it out www.crazycurls.net. or just email us at crazycurls.customerservice@gmail.com. we would love you to try our product and see what you think!

Hey, very nice site. I came across this on Google, and I am stoked that I did. I will definitely be coming back here more often. Wish I could add to the conversation and bring a bit more to the table, but am just taking in as much info as I can at the moment. Thanks for sharing.Side Wheel Attachment Kit

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